RFR: 8364664: gtest death tests failing on Windows

[Saint Wesonga]

On Fri, 8 Aug 2025 06:30:16 GMT, Thomas Stuefe <stuefe at openjdk.org> wrote:

> So, we run gtests on Windows with `--gtest_catch_exceptions=0` which disables the inbuilt exception handler.
> 
> See issues
> 
> * https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8185734
> * https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8267138 (fixed an oversight in 8185734)
> 
> See more details in my [PR description for 8185734](https://github.com/openjdk/jdk/pull/1757#issue-765285610), that's why this all sounded so familiar.
> 
> The mechanism in place since 8267138 should be enough for my understanding. @swesonga, can you find out why this is not sufficient in your case? Is this option not passed on to your test?
> 
> > That led me to wonder why, on Windows, we build libgtest and rebuild libjvm with exceptions enabled, by using -EHsc instead of no -EH option as done for the non-gtest libjvm?
> 
> In the libjvm code itself, we don't use C++ exceptions, and we catch all Windows SEH with `__try`/`__except`. We also don't want standard stack unwinding with these signals. So no need for `/EHxx`. My assumption is that the gtest framework itself uses C++ exceptions and therefore needs `/EHsc`. The documentation is not super clear on some aspects of this (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/reference/eh-exception-handling-model), but it says that for standard C++ exceptions to work `/EHsc` is needed.
> 
> > I was concerned that this might effectively undo JDK-8185734, since the suggestion in JBS was to conditionalize some code on GTEST_HAS_SEH being true. But it looks like the actual change didn't do that.
> 
> In my PR for 8184734, I wrote:
> 
> " In JBS, @kimbarrett suggested to build gtests with GTEST_HAS_SEH switched off to prevent gtest from using SEH. Unfortunately that won't work since the use of death tests means we need SEH. If we switch GTEST_HAS_SEH off, the death tests don't build. I also do not like this suggestion since this configuration may have a higher chance of bitrotting upstream."
> 
> So it looks this was the first thing I tried back then, and it failed.

Thank you for this detailed background and explanation. Turns out we have 2 separate gtest runs happening, one that matches the GitHub actions test you pointed out and another that doesn't have the `--gtest_catch_exceptions=0` flag. I was focused on the latter scenario but based on your explanation, the correct resolution is for us to not run gtests without that flag. I will close this pull request and update our test infrastructure to remove that scenario.

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PR Comment: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/26661#issuecomment-3180036471